lunes, junio 01, 2015

A Muslim woman who claimed over the weekend–in a social media post
that has since gone viral–that United Airlines discriminated against her
because of her faith, has a history rife with deep connections to the
Muslim Brotherhood and radical Imams.

31-year-old Tahera Ahmad, who serves as the Muslim chaplain at Northwestern University, claimed
over the weekend that she was discriminated against because a United
Airlines flight attendant allegedly refused to give her a full can of
unopened Diet Coke. When asked for an explanation as to why she had been
refused her unopened Diet Coke, the flight attendant allegedly told her
that the Coke can could be used as a “weapon on the plane,” Ahmad
stated in a Facebook post. After she complained, a passenger told her,
“You Moslem you need to shut the f—k up,” according to Ahmad’s
recounting of what happened on board. Ahmad’s Facebook page was taken
down this afternoon.

Without any evidence (but for her firsthand account) that the incident ever occurred, many in the mainstream media have taken to reporting on Ahmad’s account as a case of “Islamophobia.”

Islamic supremacist groups such as CAIR (Council on
American-Islamic relations) have condemned United, telling Al Jazeera
that they have taken an interest in filing a lawsuit on behalf of Ahmad.

Ahmad’s claims of discrimination have not been corroborated by any
passengers, and United Airlines rejects that any wrongdoing or acts of
discrimination occurred.

United Airlines released a statement that the flight attendant “attempted several
times to accommodate Ms. Ahmad’s beverage request.” However, her post
has since gone viral, with many calling for a boycott of United Airlines
due to its alleged mistreatment of Ahmad.

Ahmad has shown to have an affinity for radical Islamist groups that seek to employ deceptive tactics in order to advance
Sharia law, Breitbart News has found. Ahmad has attended and
participated in multiple conferences over the past couple years which
were hosted by alleged Muslim Brotherhood front groups. She has also
proudly written about, and has happily posed in photos with radical
Imams.

In late December, Ahmad attended the MAS-ICNA (Muslim American Society- Islamic Circle of North America) conference, which featured prominent leaders within the global Muslim Brotherhood network.

One month earlier, Ahmad posted a picture
to Facebook of her standing next to Suhaib Webb, who is the Imam of the
Islamic Society of Boston, an outfit run under the same umbrella
organization as the mosque attended by Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar
and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and a plethora of other convicted terrorists. Webb has a demonstrated history of radical connections, including him being a close confidant of Al Qaeda mastermind Anwar al Awlaki prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Ahmad is “well-known” to Yasir Qadhi, a cleric who she has frequently invited to speak to the student body at Northwestern. An audio
tape of one of Qadhi’s sermons revealed that he once called for Muslims
to wage holy war against non-Muslims. During his speech, Qadhi went on
to discuss how he did not believe that the Holocaust had ever occurred.

In April 2014, Ahmad joined
an MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council) delegation of American Muslim
women, who partnered with the White House “to host a historic forum
recognizing the contributions of American Muslim women.” MPAC, like the
MAS and ICNA, was originally founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group has in the past endorsed
a paper that rejects the designations of Hamas and Hezbollah as
terrorist organizations. In 2009, the group hosted a protest where
demonstrators called for the annihilation of the State of Israel.

In 2013, she recited the Quran at the annual ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) convention. Declassified FBI documents
found that the Bureau regarded ISNA as a Muslim Brotherhood front
group. The FBI also found that ISNA was founded by prominent members of
the global Muslim Brotherhood organization. Ahmad’s bio states that she
has “supported leadership for premier Muslim organizations including
[ISNA].”

Although she has an extensive record of supporting radical Islamist groups, Ahmad was recognized by the Obama White House as a leading
“Muslim female in the United States,” according to a release from her
University. She is a frequent Ramadan dinner attendee at the White
House, according to the report.

"Cuba's
most prominent dissidents say they have been kept in the dark by U.S.
officials over a list of 53 political prisoners who will be released
from jail as part of a deal to end decades of hostility between the
United States and Cuba. For years, dissident leaders have told the
United States which opponents of Cuba's communist government were being
jailed or harassed, but they say they were not consulted when the list
of prisoners to be freed was drawn up or even told who is on it. The
lack of information has stoked concern and frustration among the
dissidents, who worry that the secret list is flawed and that genuine
political prisoners who should be on it will be left to languish."

According
to Obama, the Castro regime also agreed to release a Cuban, U.S.
intelligence asset, who is widely believed to be Rolando Sarraff
Trujillo.

Sarraff Trujillo was exchanged for three Cuban spies
imprisoned in the U.S., including one serving a life sentence for a
conspiracy to kill Americans.

As if this 1-for-3 deal wasn't bad enough, there's still no information about Sarraff or his whereabouts.

As Reuters also reports, "his
parents said they are desperate to hear from their son as they haven't
spoken with him since before Obama's Dec. 17 announcement."

Meanwhile, former spy and double agent, Bill Gaede, who worked closely with Sarraff in the 1990s, has shed further doubts:

"The
only reason people strongly suspected that the mysterious spy might be
Rolando Sarraff Trujillo (a.k.a. Roly) is that his family can't find
him. Cuban prison officials told them that their son had been
transferred, but not to worry about him. He was in 'good hands'.
Certainly, Roly fit most of the description made by Obama at his press
conference announcing reestablishment of relations with Cuba: a Cuban
intelligence officer locked up for 20 years for providing cryptographic
information that led to the capture of the aforementioned spies. So who
else could it be? And if in addition the Obama Administration
'carelessly leaks' the name through 'unidentified official' sources, we
have the makings of what appears to be 'disinformation'. This
speculation is reinforced by Roly's resume. It certainly meets the '20
years' part. It does not even come close to meeting the part about
'cryptography and the capturing of the Cuban spies'. There's a
contradiction somewhere. Either the secret spy is not Roly or President
Obama is lying through every corner of his mouth."

Needless to say, we believe the President of the United States over a former double-agent like Gaede.

martes, diciembre 23, 2014

There probably is not a more loaded word these days than
“conspiracy.” So often I hear people who may believe something nefarious
might be going on anxiously qualify their position by insisting they
are not a “conspiracy theorist.” And I completely understand the
sentiment. Let’s face it, there are a lot of crackpot theories going
around on numerous issues these days. So much so, the word conspiracy evokes an almost Pavlovian reaction in many people.

But just what is a conspiracy? It’s simply the act of two or more
people agreeing to commit an illegal or immoral act. Conspiracies happen
all the time—both big and small. The trick is to determine if it really
is a conspiracy or not. And often times, the bigger the conspiracy, the
harder it is to prove.

One of the greatest conspiracies of all time, in my opinion, is
communism itself. Oh, and that’s not just my opinion. Conspiracy is one
of the essential parts of communism, as I hope to point out in this
article. Once again, this is not just my opinion, it comes straight from the communists themselves.

In my own experience, quite a few people I have encountered really
have no idea what communism is all about. They might know the history of
communism, but they often times don’t understand or grasp the ideology
behind it. And let’s face it, the mere mention of the word communism is
enough to make some people look at their watch and say, “Well, I better
get going now.” The reaction is similar to when one uses the word
“conspiracy.”

Another reason I believe a number of people glaze over when the
subject of communism is brought is up is due to the dangerously
misguided belief communism was defeated when the Berlin Wall
came down. But the fact of the matter is one out of every five people
on earth still lives under an oppressive communist regime. The countries
that are still communist are:

China

Laos

Cuba

Vietnam

North Korea

Of course, I would still consider the regime in Russia as communist.
Furthermore, the above list only includes regimes openly identifying
themselves as communist. Most of South America and Africa are ruled by leftist regimes who embrace some form of socialism. (Brazil just elected a former communist terrorist for president.) And the ideological foundation of the European Union has been called Eurocommunism. Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has described the EU as a “pale version of the Soviet Union.”

Communist regimes have killed more than 100 million people worldwide
in the 20th Century alone. And I would venture to say, that is a
conservative estimate. So how can one think communism does not still
pose a grave and ominous threat to all of humanity? It seems one must
suspend all logic and reason to come to such a conclusion. This is why I
feel so strongly that it is of paramount importance freedom-loving
people understand the ideology and political goals behind communism and
its implementation.

Naturally, it is not easy to boil a massive subject like communism
down to a nutshell. But I have been studying the subject matter for
several years know, and I’m going to attempt to do just that—boil some
things down to a nutshell.

Most communist leaders rarely invoke the term communism. Instead,
they talk of socialism. Remember, the USSR stood for the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics. Stalin almost always referred to communism
as socialism, as have many other communist leaders.

Granted, there is a fair amount of debate between scholars and
historians on how socialism and communism differ. But many of these
perceived differences are merely academic. In practice, there is very
little difference between socialism and communism. But there are some
things worth mentioning concerning the differences between socialism and
communism.

One of the more concise definitions on the differences between socialism and communism, that I have heard is “a communist is a socialist in a hurry.” Others have stated, “A communist is someone who is not afraid to pull the trigger.” Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) is quoted as saying, “Socialism is the road to communism.”

Of course, there would be no communism without Marxism. The
economic, social and cultural theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
form the ideological foundation of communism, i.e. socialism.
But Marx was a theoretician, not a practitioner of socialism, per se. It
was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin who first put the theories of Marx &
Engels into practice—referred to as Marxism-Leninism.

Interestingly, about ninety-percent of what Karl Marx wrote solely concerned economics, as evidenced by his seminal work Das Kapital—which coined the term “capitalism.” (From the best I can gather, the term capitalism
was not used in the United States until the latter part of the 19th
Century.) But it was Marx’s call for “revolutionary struggle,” as
outlined in the Communist Manifesto (published in 1848), that so captured the imaginations of many radicals at the time—and to the present day.

The entire premise of the Communist Manifesto rests upon the notion of “class struggle.” This is immediately evident when one reads the introductory lines of the Manifesto:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood
in constant opposition to one another…

The concept of oppressor-oppressed lies at the heart of Marxian socialism—us versus them. The oppressor-oppressed model is prevalent in today’s political landscape, as is the notion of “class struggle”—rich vs. poor (see 1% vs. 99%), the haves vs. the have nots, the capitalist vs. the worker, the bourgeoisie vs. the proletariat, and so on. Most Americans have been subjected to class rhetoric all of their lives—lower-class, middle-class, upper-class … blue collar vs. white collar, etc.

Some modern-day Marxists and their fellow travelers (sympathizers)
have expanded upon the oppressor-oppressed dynamic. A good example would
be the godfather of “community organizing,” Saul Alinsky. Alinsky added
yet another division to the mix: “the have some, want mores.” So now we have the haves (rich) vs. the have some, want mores (middle-class) vs. the have nots (poor), according to Alinsky.

It is important to note, that in the eyes of a Marxian socialist, the middle-class and upper-class represent the “petty bourgeoisie,” as Dr. Carroll Quigly disparagingly refers to the them in his mammoth work Tragedy and Hope.

The middle and upper classes are the economic engine of the United
States. But socialism-communism wishes to control the means of
production and distribution. In order to control production, one must
control the producer–meaning, the individual. Individualism must be
wiped out in order to create a true socialistic system, whereby the
state will provide the individual with all of their emotional, spiritual
and physical needs.

If I were to boil the Communist Manifesto down to its essence, it would be the abolition of private property. And if I were to reduce Marxism down to just one word, it would be sameness.
We all will think alike, earn alike, live alike, work alike, dress
alike … there will be no flavor for our fare, only sameness … a gray,
dreary sameness. And all of this is sold to “the masses“ with lovable
slogans like “unity in diversity” and “equality and fairness” and “progress and change.” Sound familiar? Once again, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

(Screencap credit: Yuri Maltsev)

There is another important point to consider regarding Marx’s theory of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” as outlined in the Communist Manifesto.
Communism is a utopia. It does not exist. The theory is the state will
eventually “wither away” to nothing. And this will bring in the long
awaited “workers’ paradise.” But this is all to occur sometime in the
distant future. Soviet defector Yuri Maltsev has explained these
concepts in greater depth in some videos I’ve posted here at the blog
(see here and here).

(Screencap credit: Yuri Maltsev)

But before the long hoped for communist utopia can be realized (where
every whim and need will be realized for all the “workers”), nations
must be wiped out. This is what is referred to as the “transitional
stage.” Many scholars have commented that this part of the Manifesto
is not very well thought out. It is analogous to a person who does not
like their house, so they decide to burn it down with themselves still
in it. It is almost a juvenile belief that from the ashes will arise
some great, new utopia the embodies perfect fairness and equality.
Joseph Stalin said the Communist Party must originally be destructive. –
See more at:
http://www.therightplanet.com/2014/12/a-world-conspiracy/#sthash.ESixsPSO.dpuf

(Screencap credit: Yuri Maltsev)

So, at this point, I would like to start breaking down how communism
is organized and implemented. I am going to refer to the lessons and
experiences of ex-communists. Two of the sources I will be drawing from
are Dr. Bella V. Dodd (19o4 – 1969) and Mike Vanderboegh (who claims he was the one who first broke the Fast and Furious story). Both are ex-communists who turned vocal anti-communists.

Bella Dodd points out there are three terms that are important to
differentiate concerning communism—meaning: the Communist Conspiracy
(world conspiracy), the Communist Party and the Communist Movement.
These are three different concepts, and each one must be dealt with
differently.

The Communist Conspiracy

The communist conspiracy should really not have the word communist
before it, for it is a conspiracy for world control, according to Dr.
Bella Dodd.

What is it that the world conspiracy hopes to accomplish?

The world conspiracy compromises a small group of elites located in
New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, London, Moscow, Hong Kong,
etc. Dodd points out that they are a determined group who wish to
control the resources of the world. They wish to control all of the
world’s natural resources—oil, iron, steel, tin, uranium, timber, and
the land itself. (Dodd mentions the late Freddie Fields
of Vanderbilt Steel, a card-carrying communist.) In order to control
all the natural resources of the world, one must control all the people
of the world—all seven billion of them.

Dodd points out that this leads to a rather strange phenomenon—one
that confuses many Americans, since they believe that those who would be
interested in business and industry would stand staunchly against
communism. But the world conspiracy is compromised of many different and
disparate groups and individuals.

The world conspiracy operates under different labels at different
times: communism, socialism, humanism, goodwill, global governance,
internationalism, globalism, economic democracy, industrial democracy,
social democracy, and so on—whatever it takes to move people to mass
action.

Mike Vanderboegh, a former card-carrying communist, explains it is all just collectivism
at the end of the day. Whether one wishes to call it nazism, communism,
socialism, fascism, progressivism, liberalism, nativism, tribalism,
racism—ism, ism, ism—everything is in service to the collective.

One of the main goals of communism is to divide the people. When
people are busy fighting amongst themselves, they are unable to organize
and form an effective opposition. This is where all the class struggle
and oppressed-oppressor rhetoric comes into play. And, unfortunately,
the tactic has proved wildly successful. So much so, that even
communists themselves have been astonished at how effective the tactic
of pitting one group against the other has proven to be.

The communist conspiracy has a secret and a public face. Communists
are taught to lie; they are masters of the “language of the lie.”
Shrouding their true intentions in lovable labels and slogans (semantic
manipulation, as the KGB/FSB
calls it) is what communists do best. Examples include phrases like
“sustainability,” “economic justice,” “environmental justice,” “global
citizenship,” “assault weapons,” “gun control,” “white privilege,”
“diversity,” “climate change,” “agents of change,” “progress,”
“progressive,” etc.

“If you’ve got the language up front, you’ve already won the debate …
They suck you into their worldview,” says Mike Vanderboegh.

The party teaches to never use an outright lie. Instead, communists employ disinformation (Soviet term) to agitate honest grievances. In a similar vein, Saul Alinsky taught, “Rub raw the resentments of the people.”

Mike Vanderboegh explains, “They [the party] take a kernel of truth
and wrap it in a lie … packaged so credulous people will pass it on to
other credulous people to influence their behavior to go in a certain
way.”

There were less than 20,000 Bolsheviks in Russia during the 1917 October revolution
who managed to wrest hegemony and control over 200 million Russian
citizens, adding credence to the adage that “the organized minority will
beat out the unorganized mob every time.”

The communist conspiracy has many different channels of offerings, but it all works toward the same goal: world control.

The Communist Party

The original Communist Party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks,
the majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party—a
group of revolutionaries led by Vladimir I. Lenin. (Bolshevik means
“majority” in Russian.)

In 1919, the Communist International (Comintern for short), also
known as the Third International, was initiated in Moscow. In the same
year, the Communist Party USA was founded in the United States. The
Comintern was an international communist organization
whose goal was to fight “by all available means, including armed force,
for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation
of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the
complete abolition of the State.”

The Communist Party was established as a blueprint and framework for a
future world government. Communist parties (sometimes referred to as
the Labor Party or Socialist Labor Party) were established in every
nation of the world. Communist parties established internationally were,
in effect, skeletons for a future government, not a political party.

The party focuses on politics, economics, social issues—and is
particularly interested in the educational systems, and in the cultural
life of the people. The party concerns itself with the “morality of the
people,” but only for the sake of expediency. The party makes it a point
to be out front on any social ill or injustice. But strictly for the
purpose of gaining control, and for the ear of the people.

Within the party, members are judged on their “ideological purity.”
Mike Vanderboegh describes the levels of “purity” as follows:

“There are radishes, tomatoes and killer tomatoes. A
radish (negative term) is a party member who is red on the outside but
white on the inside. A tomato is a party member who is red through and
through. But a killer tomato is a communist who is willing to pull the
trigger.”

There really isn’t a lot of difference between a radical
revolutionary and a religious zealot. (Note: I’m not disparaging
religion, per se, but rather fanaticism.) A true revolutionary
devotes themselves to the struggle much like a religious zealot devotes
themselves to their religion. Marxian socialism is a religion in its own
right—a faith, albeit one marked by fanatical, atheistic fervor.
Nothing comes before the cause, i.e. “the struggle.” Nothing. The
precepts of the Marxian faith are well spelled out in Cleon Skousen’s
book The Naked Communist.

The Communist Movement

The purpose of the communist movement is to establish a social and
ideological attitude that is pro-left. It comes to the people through
very pleasing devices.

Communism in the U.S dates back to before and after the Civil War
when Karl Marx visited the States. Marx lectured in New York City,
Philadelphia and Boston. He even corresponded with the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. The First International (First Comintern) was disbanded at the Philadelphia Conference in July 1876.

The Communist Movement on a worldwide basis does different things at
different times. Communists will do everything they can to unleash
confusion, chaos, depravity, perversion, conflict—parent vs. child,
black vs. white, gay vs. straight, one religion vs. the other, man vs.
woman, etc., etc.

Promising members within the Communist Party were often sent to Lenin’s Institute for Higher Learning,
where they were taught such things as racial agitation, trade union
building, every facet of Russian history (apparently the Russian
communists are rather “patriotic,” cf. irony), small arms training and guerrilla tactics.

Inflaming minds on a racial
and ethnic basis has proved to be one of the most effective tactics for
the communists to divide people and create conflict. (Sound familiar?)

Gaining complete dominance over media, entertainment and educational systems (see Common Core)
is of intense importance to the communists, for these institutions and
power centers have proven to be the most effective way to divide the
people and forward the party agenda.

Dr. Bella Dodd believed there weren’t but a dozen universities that
deserved the name “university.” All the others were simply institutions
of indoctrination, moving people in a direction the elites wanted them
to go. The purpose of these indoctrination centers is to demoralize
students, creating within them a feeling of alienation with everything
and everyone around them, particularly with their biological families.

Communists strive to make people ashamed, dissatisfied and unhappy
with their country, for they eschew the very notion of national
sovereignty and patriotism, since communism employs “radical social
change” to move the world toward a “classless, borderless” society. This
is why communists often refer to themselves as “citizens of the world,”
and not proud citizens of their respective countries. (By the way,
Barack Obama considers himself a “citizen of the world.”)

While the press is willing to expose the horrific crimes of Adolf Hitler
(and rightly so), they have steadfastly refused to report on the
monstrous crimes committed by communist regimes, such as the former
Soviet Union and Red China, where mass killings occurred on an
industrial scale. The astonishing brutality and barbarism employed by
communist regimes is unlike anything that has ever been seen in the
history of humanity.

For example, according to Bella Dodd, in North Korea, a million men
were transported to Inner Mongolia because the “Korean type” was not a
“type” the communists wanted to procreate. The communists decided they
were the ones who will decide which nation shall exist, and which
“racial stock” should be promoted.

Dodd claims the same forces that moved Communist development also
moved fascist development. Communism enthrones the proletariat, the
common man. Fascism enthroned the state.

The communist movement is not one monolithic block, but operates under many labels, i.e. organizations. The communist theory of change revolves around creating conflict.
This is born out of the theory of dialectical materialism that states
all progress is brought about by conflict. They will often create an
organization for the sole purpose of creating conflict. If there is no
conflict, they engender conflict in order to move public opinion to the
left, in the direction of communism. They will create a right in order
have people oppose it so they will be pulled toward the left. This is
the notion of “controlled opposition.” Vladimir Lenin once said, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”

From my own research into the origins of communist ideology, I have
run up against some rather astonishing and incredibly disturbing claims
and allegations. There is a real “heart of darkness” that lies at the
center of all this. I can’t fully explain it at this point. I just don’t
have enough verifiable and concrete information. But I have been coming
to the rather startling conclusion that is something quite sinister
that seems to be above communism itself.

In Cleon Skousen’s book The Naked Capitalist (1970), which is a critique of Dr. Carroll Quigly’s book Tragedy and Hope,
Chapter One includes a rather sobering quote from Dr. Bella Dodd. When I
first read the quote, I about fell out of my chair, because it
corroborates a lot of related research I have done over the years. But I
just didn’t want to believe it was true. It just seemed too incredible …
like a bunch of crackpot nonsense. But I’m not so sure now. So, I’ll
leave the reader with this excerpt from Chapter One of Skousen’s book,
and the reader can make up their own mind.

“I think the Communist conspiracy is merely a branch of a much bigger conspiracy!”
The above statement was made to this reviewer [Cleon Skousen] several
years ago by Dr. Bella Dodd, a former member of the National Committee
of the U.S. Communist Party.
Perhaps this is an appropriate introduction to a review of Dr. Carroll Quigley’s book,Tragedy And Hope.
Dr. Dodd said she first became aware of some mysterious
super-leadership right after World War II when the U.S. Communist Party
had difficulty getting instructions from Moscow on several vital matters
requiring immediate attention. The American Communist hierarchy was
told that any time they had an emergency of this kind they should
contact any one of three designated persons at the Waldorf Towers. Dr.
Dodd noted that whenever the Party obtained instructions from any of
these three men, Moscow always ratified them.
What puzzled Dr. Dodd was the fact that not one of these three
contacts was a Russian. Nor were any of them Communists. In fact, all
three were extremely wealthy American capitalists!
Dr. Dodd said, “I would certainly like to find out who is really running things.”

jueves, diciembre 18, 2014

Now that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry
have launched their new friendship initiative with Cuba, progressives
are thinking more optimistically about what else might be possible in
the remainder of the president’s term. After all, since the November
2014 elections, Obama has moved sharply left on immigration, climate
change, and net neutrality. So why shouldn’t the Left hope for more?

What might be next on the Obama agenda? Breitbart News has obtained one such to-do list:

10. Marijuana to be completely decriminalized under the
ever-expanding doctrine of “prosecutorial discretion.” In the meantime,
the administration will push for a complete ban on all tobacco products
and e-cigarettes.

9. The Federal Communications Commission to reimpose the “Fairness
Doctrine” on radio; the FCC to further study whether the same Doctrine
can be applied to cable TV news.

8. Jane Fonda to be named Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Ted Turner to be named Ambassador to the United Nations.

7. Wind-energy turbines to be made mandatory across the country,
except for Cape Cod, The Hamptons, Malibu, and other coastal enclaves,
where such turbines are forever forbidden.

6. The FDA and EPA to team up and decide that coal is a carcinogen.
Meanwhile, solar panels are to be included in school lunches.

4. Posthumous presidential pardons for Joe Hill, Sacco &
Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, and also a pardon for a living prison inmate,
Willie Horton.

3. Al Sharpton to be named White House Police Brutality Czar.

2. President Obama to commit to the complete eradication of both homophobia and Islamophobia.

1. The Obama administration to propose a new Constitutional Amendment
allowing individuals born in Africa or Asia to serve as President of
the United States; also, the administration to propose the repeal of the
22nd Amendment.

Note: The makers of this list are confident that if President Obama
follows through on all ten of these items, he will be awarded a second
Nobel Peace Prize.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced
that the United States would be changing its policy toward Cuba,
opening a Havana embassy and expanding travel. “Through these changes,
we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people
and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas,” President
Obama explained.
The president negotiated the deal between the United States and Cuba over the course of 18 months. Pope Francis apparently initiated the negotiations himself. The Vatican released the following statement:

[T]he Holy Father wishes to express his warm
congratulations for the historic decision taken by the governments of
the United States of America and Cuba to establish diplomatic relations,
with the aim of overcoming, in the interest of the citizens of both
countries, the difficulties which have marked their recent history.

Raul Castro thanked Pope Francis personally for the deal.
Pope Francis’ casual embrace of a communist regime contrasts sharply
with the approach of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict. Pope John Paul
II’s visit to Poland in 1979 famously helped launch the solidarity
movement that led to the collapse of communism in the nation.
When Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, he blasted the Castro
regime by routinely using the language of freedom, and implicitly criticizing the Castros:

The Church in Cuba has always proclaimed Jesus Christ,
even if at times she has had a scarcity of priests and has had to do so
in difficult circumstances. I wish to express my admiration for so many
of the Cuban faithful for their fidelity to Christ, to the Church and to
the Pope, as also for the respect they have shown for the more genuine
religious traditions learned from their elders, and for the courage and
persevering spirit of commitment demonstrated in the midst of their
sufferings and ardent hopes.

Pope Francis, then an assistant archbishop, apparently wrote a book about the visit, which he joined. The tract, titled Dialogues Between John Paul II and Fidel Castro, slammed “the spirit that has driven capitalism – using capital to oppress and subject people.”
Pope Benedict visited Cuba in 2012 and slammed the American embargo against Cuba, but also stated in Havana’s Revolution Square:

The truth is a desire of the human person, the search for
which always supposes the exercise of authentic freedom… [some] wrongly
interpret this search for the truth, leading them to irrationality and
fanaticism; they close themselves in ‘their truth,’ and try to impose it
on others.

At the time, human rights activists criticized Benedict for not meeting with dissidents.
Francis has gone further than both of his predecessors. He didn’t
merely criticize the embargo – he attempted to broker an end to it with
explicitly political maneuvering. According to his biographer, Austen Ivereigh,
Francis “saw the paralysis that resulted from the embargo, which had a
deeply damaging impact on Cuban politics, psyche and economics.”
And unlike both John Paul II and Benedict, Francis’ critique of communism has been tepid at best. In October, Francis complained
that “land, housing and work are increasingly unavailable to the
majority of the world’s population,” and warned, “If I talk about this,
some will think that the Pope is a communist.” Instead, Francis
explained, “love for the poor is at the center of the Gospel…it’s the
social doctrine of the church.”
In June,
Francis actually suggested that communism had cribbed from Catholicism:
“I can only say that the communists have stolen our flat. The flag of
the poor is Christian… Communists say that all this is communism. Sure,
twenty centuries later. So when they speak, one can say to them: ‘but
then you are Christian.’”
In December 2013, Francis said
at the United Nations that economic progress could be achieved through
“the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state, as
well as indispensible cooperation between the private sector and civil
society.” He has tweeted, “Inequality is the root of social evil” – a
notion that would certainly come as a shock to many religious people who
believe that mistreatment of others is the root of social evil.
In October 2013,
Francis went so far as to tell a prominent Italian interviewer, “Each
of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to
move towards what they think is Good…Everyone has his own idea of good
and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he
conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”
This seeming moral relativism is unsettling coming from the most
powerful voice for traditional Biblical religion on the planet.
Pope Francis’ perspective on the Cuban embargo is nothing new to the
Vatican. His active involvement in negotiations, however, is. And given
his rhetorical differences with his predecessors on the evils of
communism, that activism should cause nervousness among more traditional
Catholics in the mold of John Paul II and Benedict.

sábado, diciembre 06, 2014

China's authoritarian government is gaining a foothold on American
campuses by funding dozens of institutes that project a rose-tinted view
of the Asian nation that compromises the academic integrity of U.S.
universities, a congressional hearing was told Thursday.

Scholars of China testified that these state-funded Confucius
Institutes teach nonpolitical subjects like Chinese language and culture
but suppress discussion on sensitive topics like Tibet and the 1989
Tiananmen crackdown on democracy protesters.

The hearing was chaired by House Republican Rep. Chris Smith, an arch
critic of Beijing, who questioned whether American education was "for
sale."

Students from China now make up 31 percent of all international
students in the United States. Last year, Chinese students in U.S.
colleges and universities contributed $8 billion to the U.S. economy,
according to the Commerce Department.

U.S. colleges such as New York University are also opening campuses
in China, hoping to tap into the country's enormous, growing pool of
students.

The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Perry Link, a China expert and chancellorial chair at the University
of California at Riverside, said independent scholar-to-scholar
exchanges with China should be encouraged.

But he said the Communist Party of China opposes the exchanges and
prefers to negotiate campus-to-campus cooperation. He said inexperienced
U.S. academic administrators, eager for funding, reach protocols with
party officials that allow authorities in Beijing to choose teachers and
set curricula that provide a rosy "cameo" of China.

Thomas Cushman, a professor in social sciences at Wellesley College,
said the Chinese government's effort to forge ties with U.S institutions
is part of a more general "soft power" strategy toward the West.

There are now about 90 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., part of an expanding network of more than 400 worldwide.

There has been some push back from scholars and colleges in the U.S.
In June, the American Association of University Professors called on
universities to cancel their current agreements with Confucius
Institutes, and this fall the University of Chicago and Penn State ended
their relationships with the institute.

The Chinese state-funded outreach comes amid growing restrictions on
scholars at home as President Xi Jinping's government has tightened
controls over a wide range of society since he took power early last
year.

"For decades, the primary strategy of the CPC in censoring its own
people has been to induce self-censorship," Link said, referring to the
Communist Party of China. "Now the CPC, stronger and wealthier than
before, is looking to project these battle-tested methods onto the world
stage."

Cushman said U.S. scholars of China are careful what they say in
public so they can keep visiting. He said that leads to a "beautified"
version of China that avoids the realities of repression.

Link said he's been blacklisted since the mid-1990s and gets two or
three inquiries per month from younger scholars wanting to know what
they should avoid saying in order not to be barred.

Cushman also contended that professors on U.S. campuses may avoid
discussing sensitive tops about China in their classes out of fear of
negative evaluations by the growing number of Chinese students.

miércoles, diciembre 03, 2014

President Kennedy presided over both the failed Bay
of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but when he was shot and
killed on that November morning in 1963, Fidel Castro’s reaction was one
of shock and sadness. “This is bad news,” he repeated three times. “For
us Latin Americans, death is a sacred matter; not only does it mark the
close of hostilities, but it also imposes decency, dignity, respect.”
This
glimpse into the reclusive Cuban leader’s thoughts is made all the more
remarkable by the fact that it only exists due to Kennedy himself.
Eager to open another secret channel to Castro, JFK had sent journalist
Jean Daniel to talk with Castro privately. Daniel arrived in Havana in
mid-October, but was kept waiting and did not manage to deliver
Kennedy’s message to Castro until November 19—just days before the
president’s death. The president died without ever knowing that the
Cuban leader had received his message.
To mark its 100th anniversary, The New Republic is republishing a collection of its most memorable articles. This week's theme: Moments that changed America.
This piece originally appeared at The New Republic on December 7, 1963.

It was around 1:30 in the
afternoon, Cuban time. We were having lunch in the living room of the
modest summer residence which Fidel Castro owns on magnificent Varadero
Beach, 120 kilometers from Havana. For at least the tenth time, I was
questioning the Cuban leader on details of the negotiations with Russia
before the missile installations last year. The telephone rang, a
secretary in guerrilla garb announced that Mr. Dorticós, President of
the Cuban Republic, had an urgent communication for the Prime Minister.
Fidel picked up the phone and I heard him say: “Como? Un atentado?”
(“What’s that? An attempted assassination?”) He then turned to us to
say that Kennedy had just been struck down in Dallas. Then he went back
to the telephone and exclaimed in a loud voice “Herido? Muy gravemente?” (“Wounded? Very seriously?”)

He came back, sat down, and repeated three times the words: “Es una mala noticia.”
(“This is bad news.”) He remained silent for a moment, awaiting another
call with further news. He remarked while we waited that there was an
alarmingly sizable lunatic fringe in American society and that this deed
could equally well have been the work of a madman or of a terrorist.
Perhaps a Vietnamese? Or a member of the Ku Klux Klan? The second call
came through: it was hoped they would be able to announce that the
United States President was still alive, that there was hope of saving
him. Fidel Castro’s immediate reaction was: “If they can, he is already
re-elected.” He pronounced these words with satisfaction.

This
sentence was a sequel to a conversation we had held on a previous
evening and which had turned into an all-night session. To be precise,
it lasted from 10 in the evening until 4 in the morning. A good part of
the talk revolved about the impressions I recounted to him of an
interview which President Kennedy granted me this last October 24, and
about Fidel Castro’s reactions to these impressions. During this
nocturnal discussion, Castro had delivered himself of a relentless
indictment of U.S. policy, adding that in the recent past Washington had
had ample opportunity to normalize its relations with Cuba, but that
instead it had tolerated a CIA program of training, equipping and
organizing a counter-revolution. He had told me that he wasn’t in the
least fearful of his life, since danger was his natural milieu, and if
he were to become a victim of the United States this would simply
enhance his radius of influence in Latin America as well as throughout
the socialist world. He was speaking, he said, from the viewpoint of the
interests of peace in both the American continents. To achieve this
goal, a leader would have to arise in the United States capable of
understanding the explosive realities of Latin America and of meeting
them halfway. Then, suddenly, he had taken a less hostile tack: “Kennedy
could still be this man. He still has the possibility of becoming, in
the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the
leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between
capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an
even greater President than Lincoln. I know, for example, that for
Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with. I have gotten this
impression from all my conversations with Khrushchev. Other leaders have
assured me that to attain this goal, we must first await his
re-election. Personally, I consider him responsible for everything, but I
will say this: he has come to understand many things over the past few
months; and then too, in the last analysis, I’m convinced that anyone
else would be worse.” Then Fidel had added with a broad and boyish grin:
“If you see him again, you can tell him that I’m willing to declare
Goldwater my friend if that will guarantee Kennedy’s re-election!”

This conversation was held on November 19.

Now
it was nearly 2 o’clock and we got up from the table and settled
ourselves in front of a radio. Commandant Vallero, his physician,
aide-de-camp, and intimate friend, was easily able to get the broadcasts
from the NBC network in Miami. As the news came in, Vallero would
translate it for Fidel: Kennedy wounded in the head; pursuit of the
assassin; murder of a policeman; finally the fatal announcement:
President Kennedy is dead. Then Fidel stood up and said to me:
“Everything is changed. Everything is going to change. The United States
occupies such a position in world affairs that the death of a President
of that country affects millions of people in every corner of the
globe. The cold war, relations with Russia, Latin America, Cuba, the
Negro question… all will have to be rethought. I’ll tell you one thing:
at least Kennedy was an enemy to whom we had become accustomed. This is a
serious matter, an extremely serious matter.”

After the
quarter-hour of silence observed by all the American radio stations, we
once more tuned in on Miami; the silence had only been broken by a
re-broadcasting of the American national anthem. Strange indeed was the
impression made, on hearing this hymn ring out in the house of Fidel
Castro, in the midst of a circle of worried faces. “Now,” Fidel said,
“they will have to find the assassin quickly, but very quickly,
otherwise, you watch and see, I know them, they will try to put the
blame on us for this thing. But tell me, how many Presidents have been
assassinated? Four? This is most disturbing! In Cuba, only one has been
assassinated. You know, when we were hiding out in the Sierra there were
some (not in my group, in another) who wanted to kill Batista. They
thought they could do away with a regime by decapitating it. I have
always been violently opposed to such methods. First of all from the
viewpoint of political self-interest, because so far as Cuba is
concerned, if Batista had been killed he would have been replaced by
some military figure who would have tried to make the revolutionists pay
for the martyrdom of the dictator. But I was also opposed to it on
personal grounds; assassination is repellent to me.”

The
broadcasts were now resumed. One reporter felt he should mention the
difficulty Mrs. Kennedy was having in getting rid of her bloodstained
stockings. Fidel exploded: “What sort of a mind is this!” He repeated
the remark several times: “What sort of a mind is this? There is a
difference in our civilizations after all. Are you like this in Europe?
For us Latin Americans, death is a sacred matter; not only does it mark
the close of hostilities, but it also imposes decency, dignity, respect.
There are even street urchins who behave like kings in the face of
death. Incidentally, this reminds me of something else: if you write all
those things I told you yesterday against Kennedy’s policy, don’t use
his name now; speak instead of the policy of the United States
government.”

Toward 5 o’clock, Fidel Castro declared that since
there was nothing we could do to alter the tragedy, we must try to put
our time to good use in spite of it. He wanted to accompany me in person
on a visit to a granja de pueblo (state farm), where he had
been engaging in some experiments. His present obsession is agriculture.
He reads nothing but agronomical studies and reports. He dwells
lyrically on the soil, fertilizers, and the possibilities which will
give Cuba enough sugar cane by 1970 to achieve economic independence.

“Didn’t I Tell You”

We
went by car, with the radio on. The Dallas police were now hot on the
trail of the assassin. He is a Russian spy, says the news commentator.
Five minutes later, correction: he is a spy married to a Russian. Fidel
said, “There, didn’t I tell you; it’ll be my turn next.” But not yet.
The next word was: the assassin is a Marxist deserter. Then the word
came through, in effect, that the assassin was a young man who was a
member of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” that he was an admirer of
Fidel Castro. Fidel declared: “If they had had proof, they would have
said he was an agent, an accomplice, a hired killer. In saying simply
that he is an admirer, this is just to try and make an association in
people’s minds between the name of Castro and the emotion awakened by
the assassination. This is a publicity method, a propaganda device. It’s
terrible. But you know, I’m sure this will all soon blow over. There
are too many competing policies in the United States for any single one
to be able to impose itself universally for very long.”

We arrived at the granja de pueblo, where
the farmers welcomed Fidel. At that very moment, a speaker announced
over the radio that it was now known that the assassin is a “pro-Castro
Marxist.” One commentator followed another; the remarks became
increasingly emotional, increasingly aggressive. Fidel then excused
himself: “We shall have to give up the visit to the farm.” We went on
towards Matanzas from where he could telephone President Dorticós. On
the way he had questions: “Who is Lyndon Johnson? What is his
reputation? What were his relations with Kennedy? With Khrushchev? What
was his position at the time of the attempted invasion of Cuba?” Finally
and most important of all” What authority does he exercise over the
CIA?” Then abruptly he looked at his watch, saw that it would be half an
hour before we reached Matanzas and, practically on the spot, he
dropped off to sleep.

After Matanzas, where he must have decreed a
state of alert, we returned to Varadero for dinner. Quoting the words
spoken to him by a woman shortly before, he said to me that it was an
irony of history for the Cubans, in the situation to which they had been
reduced by the blockade, to have to mourn the death of a President of
the United States. “After all,” he added, “there are perhaps some people
in the world to whom this news is cause for rejoicing. The South
Vietnamese guerrillas, for example, and also, I would imagine, Madame
Nhu!”

I thought of the people of Cuba, accustomed to the sight of
posters like the one depicting the Red Army with maquis superimposed in
front, and the screaming captions “HALT MR. KENNEDY! CUBA IS NOT
ALONE….” I thought of all those who had been led to associate their
deprivations with the policies of President John F. Kennedy.

At
dinner I was able to take up all my questions. What had motivated Castro
to endanger the peace of the world with the missiles in Cuba? How
dependent was Cuba on the Soviet Union? Is it not possible to envisage
relations between Cuba and the United States along the same lines as
those between Finland and the Russians? How was the transition made from
the humanism of Sierra Maestra to the Marxism-Leninism of 1961? Fidel
Castro, once more in top form, had an explanation for everything. Then
he questioned me once more on Kennedy, and each time I eulogized the
intellectual qualities of the assassinated President, I awakened the
keenest interest in him.

The Cubans have lived with the United
States in that cruel intimacy so familiar to me of the colonized with
their colonizers. Nevertheless, it was an intimacy. In that very
seductive city of Havana to which we returned in the evening, where the
luminous signboards with Marxist slogans have replaced the Coca Cola and
toothpaste billboards, in the midst of Soviet exhibits and
Czechoslovakian trucks, a certain American emotion vibrated in the
atmosphere, compounded of resentment, of concern, of anxiety, yet also,
in spite of everything, of a mysterious almost imperceptible
rapprochement. After all, this American President was able to reach
accord with our Russian friends during his lifetime, said a young Cuban
intellectual to me as I was taking my leave. It was almost as though he
were apologizing for not rejoicing at the assassination.

viernes, octubre 17, 2014

A rare detailed account of the Communist takeover of Cuba and America's
role in the takeover. The jaw dropping account is exposed by the former
US Ambassador to Cuba, Earl T. Smith, an eyewitness to the State
Department's role in aiding Fidel Castro's communist takeover of Cuba.
Smith details this collusion in "The Fourth Floor", a curiously hard to
find book he wrote "as a footnote to history and to the science of
government". He added "I am convinced that my experience as the United
States Ambassador to Cuba was unusual in the sense that I lived through
the Castro Communist Revolution, and I feel that I owe it to the
American people to try to establish the fact that the Castro Communist
Revolution need never have occurred. From this experience, i learned not
only that our techniques of relations with Cuba were faulty but that
the modus operandi for the determination of policy is not only
inadequate but dangerous to the defense of our country.

"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother" - Albert Einstein

"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office" - H. L. Menken

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" -Elie Wiesel

"Stay hungry, stay foolish" - Steve Jobs

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years ther'ed be a shortage of sand" - Milton Friedman

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less" - Vaclav Havel